


It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

by Tonight_At_Noon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, End of the World, F/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 05:55:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19761967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonight_At_Noon/pseuds/Tonight_At_Noon
Summary: There was someone out there trying to bring about the end of the world, but at least they had offered a countdown clock. Darcy appreciated that.





	It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

**Author's Note:**

> This tiptoes the line between being silly and not silly. 
> 
> Title is the R.E.M song. Quote at the beginning is from Daydream Nation.
> 
> Enjoy.

**. **

_ what do you think the end of the world will look like? do you think it's just like when you shut off the t.v.? _

**.**  


It was nice of him to give them a countdown clock. Projected in the sky for everyone—literally everyone, from way down in the southernmost part of Australia to the tippy top of Europe—the big numbers clicked, getting smaller and smaller and smaller as everyone on earth panicked. The streets were filled with people sobbing. No matter where you went, piercing cries echoed. Stores were being looted, which didn’t make any sense to her—they were all going to be dead soon enough. What was the point in stealing that Tesla, that gaming device, that designer dress you’d always wanted if you weren’t going to be able to properly enjoy it?

The news channels were doing their jobs. Tracking the countdown. Providing whatever updates they could. Playing the world’s memories, good and bad, as if this was a birthday celebration and not doomsday. Even the newscasters couldn’t keep their cool. Whenever the cameras panned to them, whether they were in the studios or on the streets, no one could mistake the fear and sadness in their eyes. But it was helpful to know what was actually happening out there. Like all of the murders being committed by people with vendettas or weird sociopathic tendencies that they’d never been able to act on before.

Or the suicides. They kept accidentally showing people jumping off of buildings or sticking guns in their mouths. 

The confessions on live television were her favourite part—folks announcing all of their sins just in case the vague muscular, bearded dude in the sky was real. And not just Thor playing the Christian’s god.

No, her favourite part were the crazies who grabbed the journalists’ microphones and screamed that they knew this was going to happen. All of the signs were there, biblical or otherwise, and now who was sorry for not having listened to them.

Those kinds of people made the approaching apocalypse easier to deal with. Not that listening to them would have helped in any way. Without the Avengers as they once were knowing these sorts of things in advance was pointless. All it did was add more stress. More worry.

Oh, wait, no, Darcy Lewis’ favourite part about the end of the world were the declarations of love. Every hour, on the hour, after the updates, the news teams would bring on another poor sod finally ready to tell that special someone how they felt. Despite the cynicism that ran through her veins like blood, one of those pesky side effects of working with divorce lawyers in New York City in her let’s-forget-about-SHIELD days, Darcy melted when those people preparing for the end of the world got their chance to spill their guts. And it mostly ended well. Which didn’t surprise Darcy in the slightest. Because that was the other thing people were doing—sex. 

So much sex. Her neighbours in the apartment complex. Probably her parents. She hoped so at least, as it would explain why they hadn’t yet responded to her latest text message. And why shouldn’t everyone be getting it on? What better way to the ring in the end of the world as they knew it than with a massive bang fest. One final, hopefully mind blowing orgasm to last them a lifetime. Literally.

Another moan reached Darcy’s ears from next door. Picking up the remote control for her stereo system, she turned up the volume on the mixtape her first boyfriend made her ages and ages ago. Funnily enough, it worked better as a soundtrack to the end of the world than a soundtrack to awkward and painful teenage sex. Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” lifted into its first chorus, drowning out her neighbours. Darcy had always liked the song. Before, it was an anthem for the depressed school kids who needed angsty music to cry to so they could pretend they were in a sad movie. Now it was an anthem for this depressed adult who would have no more days after this one, good or bad. 

Darcy didn’t have anyone to have apocalypse sex with. The creepy dude whose divorce she just settled called with an offer, but she wasn’t nearly that desperate. She would rather have her last orgasm be self-administered. Not that she had much of a libido at the moment. Her anxiety level was too high. She was so used to the Avengers, either working as a team or as individuals, fixing this sort of fucked up thing. But they didn’t exist anymore. The dead ones were of no use, and who knew where the others had disappeared to. None of them had made a statement. None of them had even hinted at their involvement in any plan to try stopping the freak with the countdown clock. 

The world was alone. 

No-one quite knew the big bad’s plan anyway. But there was no doubting its efficiency. Darcy moved the curtain in her living room aside and looked again at the sky. She couldn’t help herself. The digital clock projected against the fading blue went down by another minute. Only four hours remained. Come midnight, everything— _everything_ , and wasn’t that just so goddamned sad?—would cease to exist. It was going to happen and they, the entirety of the human race, could do nothing to stop it. No amount of prayers could get them through this. 

Because this was no typical villain. He didn’t want anything. He didn’t have a desire to prove himself. To make a name for himself. He only wanted to watch the world burn. Well, maybe not burn. Darcy wasn’t sure how he was going to cut off the world’s life support. Reportedly, a collection of the world’s leading spy agencies had the guy in chains somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but he wasn’t talking. He wasn’t smiling. It was as if he was already dead and he was just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

Darcy Lewis had thoroughly given up hope. Not that she went through life with a lot of it to start with, but now that said life was going to be gone soon, she was struck by the horrendous emptiness and sickness that accompanied knowing something very bad was about to happen. She turned away from the window as another person, a man dressed in all rainbows, asked for some guy named Frank to meet him at his apartment. 

“You’re Beautiful,” James Blunt’s single that still rocked Darcy’s world in 2024, came on just as her intercom buzzed. Once. Twice. The buzzing filled Darcy. Fried her brain. She sat on her floor, motionless in front of the television, mindlessly watching this random man proclaim his love for Frank, fear stacking up inside of her. The intercom went again. 

She remembered what the protocol was. 20 hours of chaos, thinking about the end of the world, and she’d forgotten what that sound meant. She turned down the music. Getting to her feet, Darcy hobbled towards the door, brushing aside the leaves of the fiddle leaf fig tree that had gotten much bigger than she thought it would. She pressed the talk button and said _hello_ in as clear a voice as she could manage before hitting the listen button.

“It’s me.”

_It’s me_.

It was him.

She knew that voice. She bumped into that voice two months ago outside the coffee shop across the street from her work. He had said sorry, even though it was her fault. Which she had explained. _I’m a klutz_ , she had said, _I’m the one who should be apologising to you_. Then she had said, _Sorry_. And then she had looked up and seen a face that at one time had been splattered across every television screen in the world with the words _Armed and Extremely Dangerous - Do Not Interact If Spotted_ written underneath his picture. She didn’t know why, but when the bombing happened and that photograph first went up, all she could do was laugh.

Armed and extremely dangerous. Extremely dangerous _because_ of his arm. 

But none of that stupidity mattered when she recognised him outside the coffee shop. 

It was nothing at first. At first. Really, their interactions weren’t even planned. The first three took place at that exact location, either inside or just outside the coffee place. They were fleeting interactions barely lasting ten minutes. But things got complicated the fourth time when he caught her leaving work and offered to accompany her home. That was when they started talking. That was when she decided, when the moonlight hit his sad eyes just right and made them look like pools of midnight water, that he was sort of cute for being a brainwashed mass murderer. No— _former_ brainwashed mass murderer. 

Who had money on Darcy falling for an ex-HYDRA assassin? She knew, just knew, someone somewhere had made that bet. And whoever it was had reason to celebrate. 

After the countdown clock appeared, she had tried calling him. When he didn’t pick up she assumed he either didn’t want to talk—which she understood, even if it made her feel even worse—or he had forgotten how to work his cell phone. Again, she understood. The third option, the option Darcy liked best, was that he and some team of other enhanced individuals had started on a plan to foil the bad guy’s universal death wish. 

Was he there to announce they had figured everything out? 

Darcy pushed the talk button with such force her finger slipped. Steadying herself, she stabbed it once more. “I’ll buzz you in,” she said. 

Waiting for him to climb the steps of the elevator-less building was torture. Every second that ticked by meant they were another second closer to the end. As she waited, she decided the moment she opened the door she was going to jump into his arms. And maybe, if she was feeling brave enough, she would whisper into his ear how badly she wished they’d had more time. More time to get to know each other. More time to fall—

His harsh knock on the door startled Darcy out of her own head. She took in a deep breath and let the door swing wide. But before she had a chance to leap for him, he threw his arms around her and cradled her in the way she imagined cocoons cradled their growing butterflies. Shock travelled through her bones and she stepped back, dragging him with her. He held her tight. His fingers dug into her back through the thick fabric of her t-shirt. His face burrowed against the crook of her neck. She felt his nose brush her skin. His mouth skated across her collarbone. Strands of his hair tickled her chin.

Following the initial sweep of bewilderment, Darcy leaned into it. Into him. She wrapped her arms around his waist underneath his jacket and pressed her warm cheek against his warm ear. Together, they burned. 

She didn’t know how long they held each other, but when he peeled himself off of her the sky had turned almost black and the mixtape had ended. They straightened their clothes, brushing invisible dust off in sync. He returned to his full height. He towered over her, but then his mouth fell upwards into a smile that despite her anxiety made Darcy smile too. Without looking, he smacked the door closed. 

“Is it over?” she asked, failing to hide the hope in her words. His smile collapsed. As if they were mirror images of each other, hers did too. “Bucky. Is it over?” He shook his head. Such a minute movement. A spasm. But Darcy understood. She tried to take a breath. Tried, but it turned into a hiccup. “Then what the fuck are you doing here? Why aren’t you out there trying to stop it?” she said, voice rising. 

Bucky Barnes had the decency to look sheepish. Well, it was more petrified than sheepish. He put his hands up as if to stop her charging at him. “There are people working on it,” he insisted. 

“Really?” He nodded. Darcy pointed behind her at the television. “Why haven’t they said anything? Why have they let the entirety of the human race believe that all hope is lost? There are three and a half fucking hours left on that fucking clock, Bucky! Why the radio silence?”

“Because they’re not sure it’s going to work!” he returned with his own viciousness, and Darcy wondered if they had really been embracing like a couple reunited after surviving WWII only two minutes ago. Bucky’s hands clenched. She heard his left hand crunch. “They don’t want to get people’s hopes up.”

“It isn’t better to let them die with a little bit of happiness? With a little bit of faith?” 

“Do you feel happier now that I’ve told you?” he asked.

Darcy went silent. She felt she could hear the clock moving. Each imaginary click rattled her heart. “No,” she said eventually. 

“See? What good would it do the rest of the world?” He moved towards her. Reaching out, Bucky took her hands. Even his metal fingers were hot. 

Darcy stared up at him, allowing herself to momentarily sink into his blue eyes. “Why did you come here?” she prodded, her throat sticking to itself. 

“Guess.”

“Don’t be quippy,” she warned, again hearing the countdown. “There isn’t time.”

“No time for quips? Are you sure this is Darcy Lewis’ apartment?” he said, peering around the room. 

She squeezed his fleshy hand. “Bucky, there really isn’t time.”

“No,” he said, “there isn’t.”

He kissed her. Just like that, at the end of his sentence. Darcy, prepared for this moment, dragged her hands up Bucky’s arms and buried her fingers in his hair. She slanted her face and snuck her tongue between his teeth. His mouth tasted of salt. She imagined hers did too. And it was sad, because it was the end of the world. 

It was the end of the world, but she had Bucky Barnes in her apartment with his blisteringly hot hands edging underneath her t-shirt. She had Bucky Barnes pushing her closer and closer to her bedroom all while keeping his mouth cemented to hers. And even though the blinds in her room were flung wide and the countdown clock’s numbers grew smaller and smaller in the sky, it was impossible to keep her eyes open when Bucky Barnes sucked on that bit of flesh on her neck. 

She wished she knew more about him. She wished there was more time, but there probably wasn’t any more time. And as sad as she was about it all—about not seeing her parents, about not ever going to Paris or Brazil or the grasslands of Africa, about never taking an accurate Buzzfeed quiz—Darcy really was okay. She was fine. Because Bucky was there, and she knew undoubtedly that if more time was in their cards, if those people busy trying to save them came up with a plan to extend the world’s lifespan, they would fall in love.


End file.
